IBM (NYSE: IBM) stock price has been in a remarkable rally in 2023, as investors cheered its turnaround strategy and investments in AI and quantum computing. The shares jumped to a record high of $166.25 last week, giving it a market cap of over $150 billion. 

IBM, the giant technology company, is doing well as investors cheer the turnaround strategy. The stock has done well even after the company received backlash among conservatives who believe that the company was discriminating against white people.

Unlike AB InBev, IBM is a company that is difficult to cancel or boycott because it offers its services to companies and governments. Most of its solutions are incredibly essential such that they would be difficult and expensive to replace. 

The most recent results showed that IBM’s business was doing relatively well. Its revenue rose to over $14.8 billion in the third quarter, leading to a pre-tax income of over $2.3 billion. 

IBM’s software revenue rose by 6% while consulting grew by 5%. Infrastructure revenue dropped by 3% even as demand for the company’s hybrid cloud solutions remains strong internationally.

IBM has also used its strong free cash flow to reward its shareholders. It has paid over $4.5 billion in dividends, bringing its yield at over 4%. The company now has over $5 billion. Its cash balances dropped substantially after IBM acquired Apptio in a $4.6 billion.

The main reason why IBM stock price has surged is that the company has a leading role in AI. It has WatsonX, a platform that aims to help companies build and deploy AI solutions. They can also use its AI to scale their workloads and monitor and govern the entire AI lifecycle.

Also, IBM has continued to invest in quantum computing, which analysts believe will play an important role in the future. In November, the company released its first 1,000 qubit quantum chip. As I wrote earlier this year, some analysts like Michio Kaku believes that quantum computing will solve some of the challenges in modern day computing.

The challenge for IBM is that it is yet to challenge companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google Cloud and Alibaba in the cloud computing business. It has a market share of 3% while AWS and Microsoft have 32% and 26%, respectively. Google has grown its share to 11%.

IBM chart by TradingView

The daily chart shows that the IBM share price has been in a strong bullish trend in the past few months. It has jumped from the year-to-date low of $117.37 to over $160. The shares have remained above the 50-day and 100-day Exponential Moving Averages (EMA).

Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) and the Stochastic Oscillator have pointed downwards. Therefore, I suspect that the shares will retreat or consolidate in the next few days and then resume the bullish trend. If this happens, the stock could jump to over $200 in 2024.

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